ill she reached the top of the little hill; there she
would remain for hours, gazing at the Thurmberg till her hair and dress
were wet with dew.

"Believe me," she said to Johanna, "I shall be ill--here," and she
pointed to her head.

"I do believe it," assented the other, "it is easy to make one's self
ill--"

It was a day at the end of July; a frightful sultry heat brooded over
the earth, and the young wife suffered greatly from it even in her cool
room. After dinner she lay motionless in her chair by the window; a
severe headache tortured her as was so often the case lately.

Johanna placed her cupful of strong black coffee on the table and put
the book beside it which had been opened at the same page for the last
three days.

"Here is a letter too," she added.

Gertrude had acquired a great dread of letters lately. She overcame her
aversion however and opened it. It was in Jenny's pointed handwriting,
and Jenny only wrote surface gossip; one glance at the letter would
suffice. Two sheets fell out.

"It is a long time since we heard anything from you," she read, "so
that we are very anxious about you--are you still in 'Waldruhe?'"

"I met Judge K. yesterday at a reception, the same who, in the
celebrated divorce case of the Duke of P. with Countess Y., was the
counsel of the latter. I asked him playfully if a woman could separate
from her lord and master if she found that he had had more thought of
her worldly goods than of herself, described the situation pretty
plainly and spoke of a friend of mine who was in such a position. He
replied, 'Tell your friend she had better go quietly back to her
husband, for she is sure to get the worst of it.' His real expression
was a much rougher one, for he is well known as a brute.

"Well, there you have the opinion of an authority in such matters. Make
an end of the matter, for you may have so bitterly to repent a longer
delay as you are quite unable to realize in your present magnificent
scorn. If I am not much mistaken you really love him. Well, there are
things--but it is hard to write about such things. Read the enclosed
letter, which mamma sent me a few days ago. Perhaps you will guess what
I wanted to say.

"I wish you had been with me in Paris or were here now in Baden-Baden.
You would see how we German women, with our thick-skinned housewifely
virtues and our cobwebby romance, make our lives unnecessarily hard. I
am convinced a French woman would hold her si